Samsung isn't shy about flooding the mobile market with countless smartphones and tablets. The company has now taken a similar stance when it comes to its smart watches.
When Samsung launched its first smart watch in September 2013 with the Galaxy Gear, the company had high ambitions and an early lead on Apple and Google. Apple has been rumored to be working on an iWatch smart watch for a couple of years, but it looks like we will finally see the highly anticipated device get launched in October.
Google just showed off its smart watch OS, Android Wear, at Google I/O. It not only launched the LG G Watch via the Play Store, but Samsung announced its latest smart watch, the Android Wear-based Gear Live.
The Samsung Gear Live will be the company's fifth smart watch to launch since September 2013. The first-generation Galaxy Gear had poor battery life and a bulky design. The device also was reported to have an extremely high return rate. Samsung replaced the Galaxy Gear with the Gear 2 in February, when it announced the smart watch at Mobile World Congress. Samsung decided to replace Android with its own Tizen OS on the Gear 2. The company recently released an update for the Galaxy Gear that also replaces its Android OS for Tizen.
The Samsung Gear Live features a 1.63-inch 320 x 320 Super AMOLED display and a very clean and minimalistic design compared with the Gear 2 that Samsung launched in February. It's powered by a 1.2-Ghz processor, 512 MB of RAM, 4 GB of internal storage, and offers Bluetooth 4.0 LE (low energy). The Gear Live also has a built-in heart rate sensor, just like the Galaxy S5.
Unlike Samsung's previous smart watches, the Gear Live will be compatible with other Android handsets besides specific Samsung models such as the Gear 2 and Galaxy Gear.
"Samsung has been a pioneer in the quickly-evolving wearable market, and the launch of Gear Live furthers our efforts to deliver a simple and intuitive wearable experience to consumers," said J.K. Shin, CEO and president of IT & Mobile Division for Samsung Electronics. "Through our long-term close collaboration with Google, we have successfully incorporated the capabilities of Android Wear into the Gear Live, in a way that only Samsung can do. I am confident that Samsung and Google together, we will grow the smart wearable market to positively impact consumers' life."
"Watches powered by Android Wear aim to help people get access to useful information the moment you need it, at a glance," said Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Android, Chrome and apps. "It's exciting to be working closely with Samsung on the launch of the Gear Live -- with it's all-day battery and vibrant display -- to bring more smart wearables to the market."
You can pre-order the Samsung Gear Live in choice of black and wine red with interchangeable straps sometime today, June 25, via the Google Play Store. It will be released on July 7 in retail stores. The Samsung Android Wear-based Gear Live will cost $199.
